Special anime meal includes an optional Spear of Longinus to eat it with.

Within the world of Evangelion, an Angel or Eva’s “core” is a red sphere at the center of their being. It serves as the source of the entity’s power and life force…but might it also be delicious?

To find out, we travelled to an unexpected place to solve an anime mystery: Coco’s. Japanese branches of the American-founded casual chain are currently in the middle of a multi-restaurant Evangelion celebration coinciding with the release of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, and Coco’s part includes a new menu item called the Wrapped Core Hamburger Steak.

▼ And yes, there’s a Misato-narrated Evangelion Coco’s commercial.

The set meal itself costs 1,528 yen (US$14.75), but for a modest increase to 1,859 yen, you also get a Spear of Longinus to eat it with and take home when you’re done.

▼ Not quite as big as the one currently stabbed into the ground at the base of the Tokyo Skytree, but still pretty impressive.

The weapon is functional too, since you need something to pierce and tear open the foil the hamburger steak comes wrapped in.

So we made a precision strike, which revealed…

…a fully formed Angel core!

Okay, so actually it’s a whole baked tomato sitting atop the hamburger steak, which is itself resting in a bed of LCL-lookalike tomato salsa sauce. Still, it looks the part, and had our mouths watering as we flashed back to that scene in Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo where Evangelion Unit 13 chows down on a core.

In a fortunate break from the movie continuity, stabbing the core with our Spear of Longinus was not immediately followed by our head exploding. We did, however, get a surprise when we sliced into the hamburger steak…

…and melted cheese began pouring out!

At this point, our meal essentially became the Tomato and Cheese Instrumentality Project, as the two ingredients lost their individual senses of self and flowed into each other, creating a shared existence that tasted wonderful and filled us up enough that we didn’t have room for one of the Evangelion Heroine Parfaits that Coco’s is also offering.

▼ Rei’s flavor is Ramune and mango, Asuka’s vanilla and mixed berries, and Mari’s, in a fitting display of no fears of overkill, strawberry sherbet, strawberries, and mango.

The Coco’s Evangelion menu is being offered until April 20, after which we’ll have to go back to subsiding on official Nerv rations.

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